No, PSN once you claim a "free" game you can't buy them even if they are on sale. You have to cancel sub, wait until sale, buy the game.
Epic games says I own a game but it’s the same where I don’t actually own it, I just own a license to download the game from their servers. Pretty sure it’s the same on PSN, too
Maybe I misunderstood the original question
It's quite different though.
PSN:
you get access to the "claimed" monthly free games as long as you have subscription
you can't download or keep playing the "claimed" games if your subscription expired.
those claimed game will shown as "in library" and can't be purchased even if there is a on-going sale.
if you paid for a plus member extra bonus discount game, it's still yours if your sub expired.
Epic:
you can download the game and keep them somewhere, as long as the auth token can verify you own the game and not expired. (similar to Steam I think the token is valid for a week if your internet goes out. it will ask you to go into offline mode as well. )
this works for both free game they gave out and the one you paid for with money.
I don't know how the higher tier of PSN and GamePass works regarding the access of game you "played".
That's every platform, except gog, right?
As far as I know, more or less yes
GoG and FOSS games are the only two options I know of where you can have ownership of a game
Isn’t that how it works on every platform though?
No, PSN once you claim a "free" game you can't buy them even if they are on sale. You have to cancel sub, wait until sale, buy the game.
Epic games says I own a game but it’s the same where I don’t actually own it, I just own a license to download the game from their servers. Pretty sure it’s the same on PSN, too
Maybe I misunderstood the original question
It's quite different though.
PSN:
you get access to the "claimed" monthly free games as long as you have subscription
you can't download or keep playing the "claimed" games if your subscription expired.
those claimed game will shown as "in library" and can't be purchased even if there is a on-going sale.
if you paid for a plus member extra bonus discount game, it's still yours if your sub expired.
Epic:
I don't know how the higher tier of PSN and GamePass works regarding the access of game you "played".
That's every platform, except gog, right?
As far as I know, more or less yes
GoG and FOSS games are the only two options I know of where you can have ownership of a game